Physical games media may be at the sunset of their lives, according to David Perry. Speaking at an opening keynote in UK for the 4th Annual Develop Conference in Brighton, the GaiKai founder expressed his belief that "It won't be long before 100 per cent of games are all online."

We may not have seen it at E3, but it looks like David Perry is finally ready to show off his game streaming service, Gaikai, to the public. In a new video posted on his own website, Perry demonstrates how GaiKai handles, running games like Spore, World of Warcraft, and an emulated Mario Kart 64 on a standard computer with a home cable connection. Check out the video after the jump. It's pretty impressive.

Soft launches and extended beta programs seem to be all the rage, what with Google Mail being perpetually in said state, and Sony's PlayStation Home initiative apparently following the same route. EA's free to play online shooter, Battlefield Heroes would seem to be next. Ben Cousins, executive producer at DICE states that the game's "already out", as there won't be "big splash release". Cousins expects the closed beta to grow rapidly, to the point that "every hardcore gamer in the world will probably be able to get a key if they want to".

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Famous for creating beloved videogame software like Earthworm Jim, MDK and Messiah, designer, David Perry now busies himself with offloading seemingly arbitrary diatribes and opinions about the state of videogames. All this in between farting out the occasional crappy, free to play MMO, and carefully combing that immaculately coiffed do of his.

But... he does think EA's upcoming free to play online shooter, Battlefield Heroes is going to be a "phenomenon". Read on to find out why.

Volunteers of David Perry's Project: Top Secret will have something to expect this Christmas since they have been such very good boys and girls. And what is this great big present? Volunteers will be given all the tools necessary to develop the Top Secret racing MMORPG.

"This is like Christmas for the mod community," said Perry. Like Christmas it is, since the brave souls who volunteered working on the game will be able to choose and use any game engine of their choice, be it the Unreal Engine, Crysis, or id.

IGN's Modcenter is in charge of giving out various development tools to the participants of Project: Top Secret, while Acclaim will pay for the usage of every budding game developer's gaming engine of choice.

Since Project: Top Secret will eventually award the person who made the most contributions into the development of the game, the free usage of tools is nothing short of entirely helpful, and awesome.

If you're interested in joining the community effort of making the next best MMORPG, then there's no more reason to hold back: the gaming development tools are already taken care of.

CMP Technology, the organizers behind GDC China, has unveiled a few more details about the upcoming developers conference. The event is set to take place in Shanghai this August and will focus on topics such as online gaming, outsourcing, recruitment and mobile gaming. A short list of speakers who have already signed up for GDC China include the following:

• David Coleman (EA Canada)
• Tom Leonard (Valve)
• Mark Ollia (Nokia)
• David Perry (Gameconsultants.com)
• Gordon Walton (Bioware)

According to GamesIndustry.biz, GDC China is being jointly produced with IDG and will be overseen by an advisory board that includes a number of Chinese developers from companies such as Epic Games China, Shanda and JDL International. GDC China will take place at the Shanghai International Convention Center on August 27 to 29.

Oh for Pete's flying sake...

BBC reports on a little thousand-man survey conducted by British driving school BSM that shows what they, BSM, claim is an "indisputable link" between playing driving games and then driving faster and harder. (We've been here before, haven't we?) Here are the results from the BSM survey which prompted that "indisputable" comment:

• 27% of motorists ages 16-24 admitted to more risk-taking on the road after a gaming session;
• A quarter of the drivers said that they felt like they were in a racing simulation while driving for real;
• 34% of respondents thought that racing games "can improve real-life driving ability";
• Two in five respondents (around 40% of the pool) thought that games "improve reflexes" (which is, in any case, a real-world driving skill, too);
• And just over half the regular gamers pass their driver's test for the first time, compared to only 45% of infrequent (or non) gamers.

In a critical reply to this survey, acclaimed games designer David Perry said that it's not the gaming before the driving that mattered, but the emotions behind the wheel that dictate the driver's fate. "Anything that affects your emotions will affect how you drive. The guy in front, the music on the stereo... those are the things that make you speed up, not a game you played an hour ago."

Of course, the BBC said that Perry is currently working on a driving game (hmm... guess it's not the "Top Secret Project" then). But you know what? We'll just go back to what we said a while back, and agree with Perry: if you can't amp down, don't rev up (yeah, it used to say "gas up", but "rev up" is more relevant). You'd be surprised how many of the best racers in gaming and real-life can be ice-cold analytical behind the wheel - they have to be to maintain their edge.

And one more thing: indeed, gaming can help improve reflexes, and (if designed well) even introduce the uninitiated to some of the basics concepts of driving. Still, driving games are no substitute for driver's ed.